The following is from Gerald Murnane's collection, Stream System. Originally published between 1985 and 2012, these stories are true to Gerald Murnane's experimental style, often blending fact and fiction. Gerald Murnane has written over ten books, including The Plains, A Million Windows, and his memoir, Something for the Pain. He is the winner of Patrick White Literary Award and Melbourne Prize for Literature.

I ﬁrst read part of the novel À la recherche du tempsperdu,translatedintoEnglishbyC.K.ScottMoncrieff, inJanuary1961,whenIwasagedafewweekslessthan twenty-twoyears.WhatIreadatthattimewasasingle paperbackvolumewiththetitleSwann’s Way. Isuspecttoday that I did not know in 1961 that the volume I was reading was part of a much largerbook.

As I write these words in June 1989, I cannot cite the publication details of the paperback volume of Swann’s Way. I have not seen the volume for at least six years, although it lies only a few metres above my head, in the space between the ceiling and the tiled roof of my house, where I store in black plastic bags the unwanted books of the household.

IﬁrstreadthewholeofÀlarecherchedutempsperdu,inthe Scott Moncrieff translation, during the months from February to May in 1973, when I was thirty-four years old. What I read atthat time was the twelve-volume hardcover edition published byChatto and Windus in 1969. As I write these words, the twelve volumes of that edition rest on one of the bookshelves of my house.

Ireadasecondtimethesametwelve-volumeeditionduringthe months from October to December 1982, when I was forty-three years old. Since December 1982, I have not read any volume by MarcelProust.

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Although I cannot remember the publication details of thevolumeofSwann’sWaythatIreadin1961,Iseemtorememberfrom the colours of the cover a peculiar brown with a hint of underlyinggold.

Somewhere in the novel, the narrator writes that a book is a jarofpreciousessencesrecallingthehourwhenweﬁrsthandled its cover. I had better explain that a jar of essences, preciousor otherwise,wouldbeofsmallinteresttome.Ihappentohavebeen bornwithoutasenseofsmell.Thatsensewhichissaidbymany personstobethemoststronglylinkedtomemoryisasensethatI have never been able to use. However, I do have a rudimentary senseoftaste,andwhenIseeinmymindtodaythecoverofthe paperbackofSwann’sWaythatIreadin1961,Itasteinmymind tinned sardines, the product ofPortugal.

InJanuary1961,IlivedaloneinarentedroominWheatland Road,Malvern.Theroomhadagasringandasinkbutnorefrigerator.WheneverIshopped,Ilookedforfoodsthatweresoldin tins,needednopreparation,andcouldbestoredatroomtemperature. When I began to read the ﬁrst pages of Proust’s ﬁction,I hadjustopenedtheﬁrsttinofsardinesthatIhadbought—aproductofPortugal—andhademptiedthecontentsovertwoslicesof drybread.Beinghungryandanxiousnottowasteanythingthat hadcostmemoney,IateallofthismealwhileIreadfromthebook propped open in front ofme.

ForanhourafterIhadeatenmymeal,Ifeltagrowingbutstill bearablediscomfort.ButasIreadon,mystomachbecamemore andmoreoffendedbywhatIhadforcedintoit.Ataboutthetime whenIwasreadingofhowthenarratorhadtastedamouthfulof cake mixed with tea and had been overcome by an exquisite sensation, the taste of the dry bread mixed with the sardine oil was so strong in my mouth that I was overcome by nausea.

Duringthetwentyorsoyearsfrom1961untilmypaperback Swann’sWaywasenclosedinblackplasticandstoredabovemy ceiling,Iwouldfeelinmymindatleastamildﬂatulencewhenever Ihandledthebook,andIwouldseeagaininmymind,wheneverI noticed the hint of gold in the brown, the light from the electric globeabovemeglintingintheﬁlmofoilleftbehindafterIhad rubbedmycrustsaroundmydinnerplateinmyrentedroomin Malvernonasummereveningin1961.

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While I was writing the previous sentence, I saw in my mind an image of a bed of tall ﬂowers near a stone wall which is the wall of a house on its shaded side.

Iwouldliketobesurethattheimageofthetallﬂowersandthe stone wall ﬁrst appeared in my mind while I was reading Swann’s Way in 1961, but I can be sure of no more than that I see those ﬂowers and that wall in my mind whenever I try to remember myself ﬁrst reading the prose ﬁction of Marcel Proust. I am notwriting today about a book or even about my reading of a book. I am writing about images that appear in my mind whenever I try to remember my having read thatbook.

TheimageoftheﬂowersisanimageofthebloomsoftheRusselllupinsthatIsawinanillustrationonapacketofseedsin1948, whenIwasnineyearsold.Ihadaskedmymothertobuytheseeds because I wanted to make a ﬂower-bed among the patches of dust and gravel andtheclumpsofspeargrassaroundtherentedweatherboardhouseat244NealeStreet,Bendigo,whichIusedtoseein my mind continually during the years from 1966 to 1971, while I waswritingaboutthehouseat42LeslieStreet,Bassett,inmybook of ﬁction TamariskRow.

Iplantedtheseedsinthespringof1948.Iwateredthebedand tended the green plants that grew from the seeds. However, the spring of 1948 was the season when my father decidedsuddenly tomovefromBendigoandwhenIwastakenacrosstheGreatDivideandtheWesternPlainstoarentedweatherboardcottagenear the Southern Ocean in the district of Allansford before I could comparewhateverﬂowersmighthaveappearedonmyplantswith thecolouredillustrationonthepacketofseeds.

While I was writing the previous paragraph, a further detail appeared in the image of the garden beside the wall in my mind. I now see in the garden in my mind an image of a small boy with dark hair. The boy is staring and listening. I understand today that theimageoftheboywouldﬁrst have appearedinmymindatsome time during the ﬁve months before January 1961 and soon after I had looked for the ﬁrst time at a photograph taken in the year 1910 in the grounds of a State school near the Southern Ocean in the district of Allansford. The district of Allansford is the district where my father was born and where my father’s parents lived for fortyyearsuntilthedeathofmyfather’sfatherin1949andwhere I spent my holidays as achild.

The photograph is of the pupils of the school assembled in rowsbesideagardenbedwherethetallerplantsmightbedelphiniumsorevenRusselllupins.Amongthesmallestchildreninthe frontrow,adark-hairedboyagedsixyearsstarestowardsthecameraandturnshisheadslightlyasthoughafraidofmissingsome wordorsomesignalfromhiseldersandhisbetters.Thestaring andlisteningboyof1910becameintimethemanwhobecamemy fathertwenty-nineyearsafterthephotographhadbeentakenand whodiedinAugust1960,twoweeksbeforeIlookedfortheﬁrst time at the photograph, which my father’s mother had kept for ﬁftyyearsinhercollectionofphotographs,andﬁvemonthsbeforeIreadfortheﬁrsttimethevolumeSwann’sWayinthepaperback edition with the brownishcover.

During his lifetime my father read a number of books, but even if my father had been alive in January 1961, I would not have talkedtohimaboutSwann’s Way. Whenever my father and I had talked about books during the last ﬁve years of his life, we had quarrelled. If my father had been alive in January 1961 and if he had seen me reading Swann’s Way, he would have asked meﬁrst what sort of man the authorwas.

Whenever my father had asked me such a question in the ﬁve years before he died in 1960, I had answered him in the way that I thought would be most likely to annoy him. In January 1961, when I was reading Swann’s Way for the ﬁrst time, I knew hardly anything about the author. Since 1961, however, I have read two biographies of Marcel Proust, one by André Maurois and one by George D. Painter. Today, Monday 3 July 1989, I am able to compose the answer that would have been most likely to annoy my father if he had asked me his question in January 1961.

“For most of my life I have supposed that the place that matters most to me is a place in my mind and that I ought to think not of myself arriving in the future attheplacebutofmyselfinthefutureseeingtheplacemoreclearly. . .”

Myfather’squestion:Whatsortofmanwastheauthorofthat book?Myanswer:Theauthorofthisbookwasaneffeminate,hypochondriacFrenchmanwhomixedmostlywiththeupperclasses, whospentmostofhislifeindoors,andwhowasneverobligedto work for hisliving.

My father is now annoyed, but he has a second question:What do I hope to gain from reading a book by such aman?

In order to answer this question truthfully, I would have to speaktomyfatheraboutthethingthathasalwaysmatteredmost tome.Iwouldneverhavespokenaboutthisthingtomyfather during his lifetime, partly because I did not understand at that timewhatthethingisthathasalwaysmatteredmosttomeand partlybecauseIpreferrednottospeaktomyfatheraboutthings that mattered to me. However, I am going to answer my father truthfullytoday.

I believe today, Monday 3 July 1989, that the thing that has always mattered most to me is a place. Occasionally during my life I may have seemed to believe that I might arrive at this place by travelling to one or another district of the country in which I was born or even to some other country, but for most of my life I have supposed that the place that matters most to me is a place in my mind and that I ought to think not of myself arriving in the future attheplacebutofmyselfinthefutureseeingtheplacemoreclearly thanIcanseeanyotherimageinmymindandseeingalsothatall theotherimagesthatmattertomearearrangedaroundthatimage ofaplacelikeanarrangementoftownshipsonamap.

My father might be disappointed to learn that the placethat mattersmosttomeisadistrictofmymindratherthanadistrict ofthecountrywhereheandIwereborn,buthemightbepleased to learn that I have often supposed that the place in my mindis grassycountrysidewithafewtreesinthedistance.

From the time when I ﬁrst began as a child to read books of ﬁction,Ilookedforwardtoseeingplacesinmymindasaresultof myreading.OnahotafternooninJanuary1961,IreadinSwann’s Wayacertainplace-name.Iremembertoday,Tuesday4July1989, my feeling when I read that place-name more than twenty-eight years ago, something of the joy that the narrator of Swann’sWay describeshimselfashavingfeltwheneverhediscoveredpartofthe truth underlying the surface of his life. I will come back to that place-name later and by a differentroute.

Ifmyfathercouldtellmewhatmatteredmosttohimduring hislifetime,hewouldprobablytellmeabouttwodreamsthathe dreamedoftenduringhislifetime.Theﬁrstwasadreamofhimselfowningasheeporcattleproperty;thesecondwasadreamof hiswinningregularlylargesumsofmoneyfrombookmakersat racemeetings.Myfathermighteventellmeaboutasingledream that arose out of the other two dreams. This was a dream ofhis settingoutonemorningfromhissheeporcattlepropertywithhis own racehorse and with a trusted friend and of his travelling a hundredmilesandmoretoaracecourseontheedgeof anunfamiliartownandtherebackinghishorsewithlargesumsofmoney andsoonafterwardswatchinghishorsewintheracethathehad been backed towin.

If I could ask my father whether the dreams that mattered to him were connected with any images that appeared in his mindas a result of his reading books of ﬁction, my father might remind me that he had once told me that his favourite book of ﬁction was abookbyaSouthAfricanwriter,StuartCloete,aboutafarmer andhissonswhodrovetheirherdsofcattleandﬂocksofsheep outofthesettleddistrictsofsouthernAfricaandnorth-westinto whatseemedtothemendlessunclaimedgrazinglands.

AlthoughJanuary1961waspartofmysummerholidays,Iwas already preparing to teach a class of forty-eight primary-school children as from February and to study two subjects at university duringmyevenings.ThecharactersinSwann’sWaymostlyseemed toleadidlelivesoreventoenjoytheearningsofinheritedwealth. I would have liked to frogmarch the idle characters out of their salons and to conﬁne them each to a room with only a sink and a gas ring and a few pieces of cheap furniture. I would then have enjoyed hearing the idlers calling in vain for theirservants.

I heard myself jeering at the idlers. What? Not talking about the Dutch Masters, or about little churches in Normandy with something of the Persian about them?

SometimeswhileIreadtheearlypagesofSwann’sWayin1961, and when I still thought the book was partly a ﬁctional memoir, I took a strong dislike to the pampered boy who had been the narrator as a child. I saw myself dragging him out of the arms of his mother and away from his aunts and his grandmother and then thrusting him into the backyard of the tumbledown farm-workers’ cottage where my family lived after we had left Bendigo, putting an axe into his hand, pointing out to him one of the heaps of timber that I had split into kindling wood for the kitchen stove, and then hearing the namby-pamby bleating for hismama.

In1961,wheneverIheardinmymindtheadultcharactersof Swann’sWaytalkingaboutartorliteratureorarchitectureIheard themtalkinginthelanguageusedbythegentlemenandladymembers of the Metropolitan Golf Club in North Road, Oakleigh, whereIhadworkedasacaddyandanassistantbarmanfrom1954 to1956.

Inthe1950s,therewerestillpeopleinMelbournewhoseemed to want you to believe that they had been born or educated in England or that they had visited England often or that they thought and behaved as English people did. These people in Melbourne spoke with what I would call a world-weary drawl. I heard that drawl by day from men in plus-four trousers while I trudged behind them down fairways on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. In the evenings of those days, I heard the same drawl in the bar of the golf club where the same men, now dressed in slacks and blazers, drank Scotch whisky orgin-and-tonic.

One day soon after I had ﬁrst begun working at the Metropolitan Golf Club, I looked into a telephone directory for the addressesofsomeofthemostoutrageousdrawlers.Ifoundnot only that most of them lived in the suburb of Toorak, but that most of this majority lived in the same neighbourhood, which consistedofStGeorgesRoad,LansellRoad,andafewadjoining streets.

Six years after I learned this, and only a few months before I ﬁrstreadSwann’sWay,Itravelledalittleoutofmywayoneafternoon between the city and Malvern. On that ﬁne spring afternoon, I looked from a window of a tram down each of St Georges Road and Lansell Road, Toorak. I got an impression of tall, pale-coloured houses surrounded by walled gardens in which the trees were just coming into ﬂower.

WhileIreadSwann’sWayin1961,anyreferencetoPariscaused me to see in my mind the pale-coloured walls and mansions of St Georges Road and Lansell Road. When I ﬁrst read the word faubourg,whichIhadneverpreviouslyreadbutthemeaningofwhich I guessed, I saw the upper half of a prunus tree appearing from behind a tall wall of cream-coloured stone. The ﬁrst syllable of thewordfaubourgwaslinkedwiththeabundantfrothinessofthe pink ﬂowers on the tree, while the second syllable suggested the solid, forbidding wall. If I read a reference to some public garden orsomewoodsinParis,IsawinmymindthelandscapethatIconnectedwiththeworld-wearydrawlersofMelbourne:theview through the plate-glass windows of the dining room and barin theclubhouseoftheMetropolitanGolfClub—theviewoftheundulating,velvetyeighteenthgreenandtheclose-mownfairwayof cushionycouchgrassreachingbackbetweenstandsofgumtrees and wattle trees to the point where the trees almost converged behindtheeighteenthtee,leavingagappastwhichthehazyseventeenthfairwayformedthefurtherpartofthetwofoldvista.

MyfatherdespisedthedrawlersofMelbourne,andifeverhe had read about such a character as Monsieur Swann, myfather wouldhavedespisedhimalsoasadrawler.Ifoundmyself,atthe MetropolitanGolfClubinthe1950s,wantingtodistinguishbetween the drawlers that I could readily despise and a sort of drawlerthatIwasreadytorespect,ifonlyIcouldhavelearned certain things abouthim.

ThedrawlersthatIcouldreadilydespiseweresuchasthegrey-haired man that I heard one day drawling his opinion of an American ﬁlm or play that he had seen recently. The man lived in one of the two roads that I named earlier and was wealthy as a result of events that had happened before his birth in places far from the two roads. The chief of these events were the man’s great-grandfather’shavingbrewedandthenpeddledonthegoldﬁeldsof Victoriainthe1860sanimpressivelynamedbutprobablyineffective patentmedicine.

TheAmericanﬁlmorplaythatthedrawlerhadseenwasnamed TheMoonIsBlue.Ihadlearnedpreviouslyfromnewspapersthat some people in Melbourne had wanted The Moon Is Blue to be banned, as many ﬁlms and plays and books were banned in Melbourne in the 1950s. The people had wanted it banned because it was said to contain jokes with doublemeanings.

OntheafternoonnearlyfortyyearsagowhenIheardthegrey-haired drawler drawl those words, I readily despised him because I was disappointed to learn that a man who had inherited a fortune and who might have taken his pleasure from the ownership of a vast library or a stable of racehorses could boast of having sniggered at what my school-friends and I would have calleddirty jokes.

Six or seven years later, when I read for the ﬁrst time about Swann, the descendant of stockbrokers, and his passion for Odette de Crecy, I saw that the Swann in my mind had the grey hair and wore the plus-four trousers of the great-grandson of the brewer and peddler of patent medicines.

The Swann in my mind was not usually one of the despised drawlers. Sometimes at the Metropolitan Golf Club, but more often when I looked at the owners of racehorses in the mounting yard of one or another racecourse, I saw a sort of drawler that I admired. This drawler might have lived for some time duringeach year behind a walled garden in Melbourne, but at other times he lived surrounded by the land that had been since the years before the discovery of gold in Victoria the source of his family’s wealth and standing—he lived on his sheep or cattleproperty.

“Theownership of a country estate has always seemed to me to add a further layer to a person: to suggest, as it were, far-reaching vistas within the person.”

Inmyseventhbookofﬁction,O,DemGoldenSlippers,which I expect to be published during 1993, I will explain something of what has happened in the mind of a person such as myself whenever he has happened to see in the mounting yard of a racecourse in any of the towns or cities of Victoria an owner of a racehorse who is also the owner of a sheep or cattle property far from that town or city. Here I have time only to explain ﬁrst that for most of my life I have seen most of the sheep or cattle properties in my mind as lying in the district of Victoria in my mind that is sometimes called the Western Plains. When I look towards that districtinmymindwhileIwritethesewords,Ilooktowardsthe north-west of my mind. However, when I used to stand on theWarrnambool racecourse during my summer holidays in the 1950s, which is to say, when I stood in those days at a point nearly three hundred kilometres south-west of where I sit at this moment, I still saw often in the north-west of my mind sheep or cattle propertiesfarfromwhereIstood,anddoublyfarfromwhereIsittoday writing thesewords.

Today, 26 July 1989, I looked at a map of the southern part of Africa.Iwantedtoverifythatthedistrictswherethechiefcharacter in my father’s favourite book of ﬁction arrived with his ﬂocks and herds at what might be called his sheep or cattle property would have been in fact north-west of the settled districts. After having looked at the map, I now believe that the owner of the ﬂocks and herds was more likely to have travelled north-east. That being so, when my father said that the man in southern Africa had travelled north-west in order to discover the site of his sheep or cattle property, my father perhaps had in mind that the whole of Africa was north-west of the suburb of Oakleigh South, where my father and I lived at the time when he told me about his favourite book of ﬁction, so that anyone travelling in any direction in Africa was travelling towards a place north-west of my father and myself, and any character in a book of ﬁction who was described as having travelled in any direction in Africa would have seemed to my father to have travelled towards a place in the northwest of my father’s mind. Or, my father, who was born and who lived for much of his life in the south-east of Australia, may have seen all desirable places in his mind as lying in the north-west of hismind.

The only map that I owned in the 1950s was a road map of Victoria. When I looked at that map, I saw that Apsley was the furthest west of any town in the Western District of Victoria. Past Apsleywasonlyapaleno-man’s-land—theﬁrstfewmilesofSouth Australia—and then the end of themap.

The man from the district around Apsley stood out among the owners in the mounting yard. He wore a pale-grey suit and apale-grey hat with green and blue feathers in the band. Under the rear brimofhishat,hissilveryhairwasbunchedinastyleverydifferent from the cropped style of the men around him. As soon as I hadseenthemanfromthedistrictaroundApsley,Ihadheardhim in my mind speaking in a world-weary drawl but I was far from despisinghim.

I have always become alert whenever I have read in a book of ﬁction a reference to a character’s country estates. Theownership of a country estate has always seemed to me to add a further layer to a person: to suggest, as it were, far-reaching vistas within the person.“Youseemehere,amongthesewallsofpalestonetopped bypinkblossoms,”Ihearthepersonsaying,“andyouthinkofthe placesinmymindasbeingonlythestreetsofthissuburb—orthis faubourg. You have not seen yet, at a further place in my mind, the leafy avenue leading to the circular driveway surrounding the vast lawn; the mansion whose upper windows overlook grassy countryside with a few trees in the distance, or a stream that is marked on certain mornings and evenings by strands ofmist.”

IreadinSwann’sWayduringJanuary1961thatSwannwasthe owner of a park and a country house along one of the two ways wherethenarratorandhisparentswentwalkingonSundays. According to my memory, I learned at ﬁrst that Swann’s park was bounded on one side at least by a white fence behind which grew numerous lilacs of both the white-ﬂowering and the mauve-ﬂowering varieties. Before I had read about that park and those lilacs, I had seen Swann in my mind as the drawler in plus-four trousers that I described earlier. After I had read about the white fence and the white and lilac-coloured ﬂowers, I saw in my mind a differentSwann.

Asanyonewhohasreadmyﬁrstbookof ﬁction,Tamarisk Row,willknow,thechiefcharacterofthatbookbuildshisﬁrst racecourseandﬁrstseesinhismindthedistrictofTamariskRow whilehekneelsinthedirtunderalilactree.Asanyonewillknow whohasreadthepiece“FirstLove”inmysixthbookofﬁction, VelvetWaters,thechiefcharacterof“FirstLove”decides,after manyyearsofspeculatingaboutthematter,thathisracingcolours arelilacandbrown.AfterIhadﬁrstreadabouttheparkandthe lilacs at Combray, I remembered having read earlier in Swann’s WaythatSwannwasagoodfriendof thePrinceof Walesanda memberoftheJockeyClub.AfterIhadrememberedthis,Isaw Swanninmymindashavingthesuitandthehatandthebunched silverhairbeneaththebrimofhishatofthemanfromApsley,far tothenorth-westofWarrnambool.IdecidedthatSwann’sracing colours would have been a combination of white and lilac. In 1961whenIdecidedthis,theonlysetof whiteandlilaccolours that I had seen had been carried by a horse named Parentive, ownedandtrainedbyaMrA.C.Gartner.InoticedtodaywhatI believeIhadnotpreviouslynoticed:althoughtheoneoccasion whenIsawthehorseParentiveracewasaSaturdayatCaulﬁeld Racecourseatsometimeduringthelate1950s,MrGartnerandhis horsecamefromHamilton,which,ofcourse,isnorth-westfrom whereIsitnowandonthewaytoApsley.

One detail of my image of Monsieur Swann, the owner ofracehorses, changed a few months later. In July 1961, I became the owner of a small book illustrated with reproductions of some of theworksoftheFrenchartistRaoulDufy.AfterIhadseenthe gentlemeninthemountingyardsoftheracecoursesinthoseillustrations, I saw above the bunched silvery hair of Monsieur Swanninmymindnotagreyhatwithblueandgreenfeathersbut a black tophat.

Iﬁrstreadtheﬁrstofthetwelvevolumesofthe1969Chatto andWinduseditionofÀlarecherchedutempsperdu,asIwrote earlier, in the late summer and the autumn of 1973, when Iwas thirty-fouryearsofage.OnahotmorningwhileIwasstillreadingtheﬁrstvolume,Iwaslyingwiththebookbesidemeonapatch ofgrassinmybackyardinanorth-easternsuburbofMelbourne. Whilemyeyeswereclosedforamomentagainsttheglareofthe sun,Iheardthebuzzingofalargeﬂyinthegrassnearmyear.

SomewhereinÀlarecherchedutempsperdu,Iseemtoremember, is a short passage about the buzzing of ﬂies on warm mornings, but even if that passage is in the part of the text that I had read in 1961, I did not recall my having previously read aboutthe buzzingofﬂiesinMarcelProust’stextswhenthelargeﬂybuzzed in the grass near my ear in the late summer of 1973. What I recalled at that moment was one of those parcels of a few moments ofseeminglylosttimethatthenarratorofÀlarecherchedutemps perdu warns us never deliberately to go in search of. The parcel cametome,ofcourse,notasaquantityofsomethingcalledtime, whatever that may be, but as a knot of feelings and sensationsthat I had long before experienced and had not sincerecalled.

The sensations that had been suddenly restored to me were those that I had experienced as a boy of ﬁfteen years walking alone in the spacious garden of the house belonging to the widowed mother of my father in the city of Warrnambool in the south-west of Victoria on a Saturday morning of my summer holidays. The feelings that had been suddenly restored to me were feelings of expectancyandjoy.OntheSaturdaymorninginJanuary1954,Ihad heardthebuzzingofalargeﬂywhileIhadbeenlookingatabush of tiger lilies inbloom.

AsIwritethison28July1989,Inoticefortheﬁrsttimethatthe colour of the tiger lilies in my mind resembles the colour ofthe cover of the biography of Marcel Proust by André Maurois that I quoted from in my ﬁfth book of ﬁction, Inland. The passage that I quoted from in that book includes the phrase invisible yet enduring lilacs, and I have just now understood that that phrase oughttobethetitleofthispieceofwriting...InvisibleYetEnduringLilacs.

My book Inland includes a passage about tiger lilies that I wrote while I saw in my mind the blooms on the bush of tiger lilies that I was looking at when I heard the large ﬂy buzzing in January 1954.

I had felt expectancy and joy on the Saturday morning in January 1954 because I was going to go later on that day to the so-called summer meeting at Warrnambool racecourse. Although I was already in love with horse-racing, I was still a schoolboy and seldom had the money or the time for going to race meetings. On thatSaturdaymorning,Ihadneverpreviouslybeentoaracemeeting at Warrnambool. The buzzing of the ﬂy was connected in my mind with the heat of the afternoon to come and with the dust and the dung in the saddling paddock. I had felt a particular expectancy and joy on that morning while I had pronounced to myselfthenametigerlilyandwhileIhadstaredatthecoloursofthe blooms on the bush. The names of the racehorses of the Western District of Victoria and the racing colours of their owners were mostly unknown to me in 1954. On that Saturday morning, I was trying to see in my mind the colours, unfamiliar and striking,carried by some horse that had been brought to Warrnambool from a hundred miles away in the north-west, and I was trying to hear in my mind the name of that horse.

During the morning in the late summer of 1973 when I heard the buzzing of the large ﬂy soon after I had begun to read theﬁrst ofthetwelvevolumesofÀlarecherchedutempsperdu,thefeelings that came back to me from the Saturday morning nineteen years before only added to the feelings of expectancy and joythat IhadalreadyfeltasIhadpreparedtoreadthe twelve volumes. On that morning in my backyard in 1973, I had been aware for twelve years that one of the important place-names in À la recherche du temps perdu had the power to bring to my mind details of a place such as I had wanted to see in my mind during most of my life. That place was a country estate in my mind. The owner of the estate spent his mornings in his library, where the windows overlookedgrassycountrysidewithafewtreesinthedistance,andhis afternoons exercising his racehorses. Once each week, he travelled a hundred miles and more with one of his horses and with his distinctive silk racing colours south-east to a racemeeting.

“Abayinastreammighthaveseemedageographicalabsurdity, but I saw in my mind the calm water, the green rushes, the green grassintheﬁeldsbehindtherushes.”

At some time during 1949, several years before I had attended any race-meeting or had heard the name of Marcel Proust, my father told me that he had carved his name at two places in the sandstone that underlies the district of Allansford where he was born and where his remains have lain buried since 1960. The ﬁrst of the two places was a pinnacle of rock standing high out of the water in the bay known as Childers Cove. My father told me in 1949 that he had once swum through the ﬁfty yards of turbulent water between the shore and Steeple Rock with a tomahawk tied to his body and had carved his name and the date on the side of Steeple Rock that faced the Southern Ocean. The second of the two places was the wall of a quarry on a hill overlooking the bays of the Southern Ocean known as Stanhopes’ Bay, Sandy Bay, and Murnane’s Bay, just south-east of Childers Cove.

During the ﬁrst twenty-ﬁve years after my father had died, I thought about neither of the two places where he had once carved his name. Then, in 1985, twenty-ﬁve years after my father had died, and while I was writing a piece of ﬁction about a man who had read a story about a man who thought often about the bedrock far beneath his feet, an image of a stone quarry came into my mind and I wrote that the father of the narrator of the story had carved his name on the wall of a quarry, and I gave the title “StoneQuarry”tomypieceofﬁction, which untilthenhadlacked atitle.

Intheautumnof1989,whileIwasmakingnotesforthispiece of writing but before I had thought of mentioning my father in the writing, a man who was about to travel with a camera from MelbournetothedistrictofAllansfordofferedtobringbackto mephotographsof anyplacesthatImightwishtoseeinphotographs.

Igavethemandirectionsforﬁndingthequarryonthehill overlooking the Southern Ocean and asked him to look on the walls of the quarry for the inscription that my father had told me forty years before that he hadcarved.

Twodaysago,on28July1989,whileIwaswritingtheearlier passagethathastodowiththebuzzingofaﬂynearabushoftigerliliesatWarrnamboolin1954,Ifoundamongthemailthat hadjustarrivedatmyhouseacolouredphotographofanareaof sandstoneinwhichfourlettersandfournumeralsarevisible.The fournumerals1-9-2-1allowmetobelievethatmyfatherstoodin frontoftheareaofsandstoneintheyear1921,whenhewasaged seventeenyearsandwhenMarcelProustwasagedﬁftyyears,as Iam today, andhadoneyearofhisliferemaining.Thefourlettersallowmetobelievethatmyfatherin1921carvedinthesandstonetheﬁrstletteroftheﬁrstofhisgivennamesfollowedbyall the letters of his surname but that rainwater running down the wallofthequarrycausedpartofthesandstonetobreakoffand to fall away at some time during the sixty-eight yearsbetween 1921and1989,leavingonlytheletterRforReginaldfollowedby the ﬁrst three letters of my father’s and mysurname.

Ihaveanumberofphotographsofmyselfstandinginoneor anothergardenandinfrontof oneoranotherwall,buttheearliestofthesephotographsshowsmestanding,intheyear1940,on a patch of grass in front of a wall of sandstone that is part of a houseonitssunlitside.ThewallthatImentionedearlier—thewall thatappearsasanimageinmymindtogetherwiththeimageof asmallboyandtheimageofabedoftallﬂowerswheneverItry toimaginemyselfﬁrstreadingtheﬁrstpagesofÀlarecherchedu tempsperdu—isnotthesamewallthatappearsinbrightsunlight inthephotographofmyselfin1940.Thewallinmymindisawall ofthesamehousethatIstoodbesideonadayofsunshinein1940, butthewallinmymindisawallontheshadedsideofthehouse. (Ihavealreadyexplainedthattheimageoftheboyinmymindis animageofaboywhowasﬁrstphotographedthirtyyearsbefore the day of sunshine in1940.)

Thehousewiththewallsofsandstonewasbuiltbymyfather’s father less than one kilometre from where the Southern Ocean formsthebayknownasSandyBay,whichisnexttothebaysknown as Murnane’s Bay and Childers Cove on the south-west coast of Victoria. All the walls of the house were quarried from the place where the surname of the boy who appears in my mind as listening and staring whenever I remember myself ﬁrst reading about Combray now appears as no more than the letters MUR . . . the root in the Latin language, the language of my father’s religion, of the word forwall.

At the summer race meeting at Warrnambool racecoursein January1960,whichwasthelastsummermeetingbeforethedeath ofmyfatherandthesecond-lastsummermeetingbeforemyﬁrst readingtheﬁrstpartofÀlarecherchedutempsperdu,Ireadin myracebookthenameofaracehorsefromfartothenorth-west ofWarrnambool.Thenamewasaplace-nameconsistingoftwo words.TheﬁrstofthetwowasawordthatIhadneverpreviously read but a word that I supposed was from the French language.

The second word was the word Bay. The colours to be worn by the rider of the horse were brown and white stripes.

I found the name and the colours of the horse peculiarly attractive. During the afternoon, I looked forward to seeing the owner of the horse and his colours in the mounting yard. However, when the ﬁeld was announced for the race in which the horse had been entered, I learned that the horse had beenscratched.

During the twelve months following that race meeting, I often pronounced in my mind the name of the racehorse with the name ending in the word Bay. During the same time, I often saw in my mind the brown and white colours carried by the horse. During the same time also, I saw in my mind images of a sheep or cattle property in the far west of Victoria in my mind (that is,north-west of the south-west of Victoria in my mind) and of the owner of the property, who lived in a house with a vast library. However, none of the images of the sheep or cattle property or of the owner of the property or of his vast library has appeared in my mind since January1961,whenIreadinSwann’sWaytheﬁrstofthetwowords of the horse’sname.

InJanuary1961,Ilearnedfromthepaperbackvolumewiththe titleSwann’sWaythatthewordthatIhadpreviouslyknownonly aspartofthenameofaracehorsethathadbeenenteredinarace at Warrnambool racecourse, as though its owner and itstrainer were going to bring the horse out of the north-west in thesame waythatthehorsehadbeenbroughtinthedreamthathadmattered most to my father, was the name of one of the placesthat matteredmosttothenarratorofSwann’sWayfromamongthe placesaroundCombray,wherehespenthisholidaysineachyear of hischildhood.

After I had learned this, I saw in my mind whenever I said to myself the name of the horse that had not arrived at Warrnambool racecourse from the north-west, or whenever I saw in my mind a silk jacket with brown and white stripes, a stream ﬂowing throughgrassycountrysidewithtreesinthebackground.Isaw thestreamatonepointﬂowingpastaquietreachthatIcalledin my mind abay.

Abayinastreammighthaveseemedageographicalabsurdity, but I saw in my mind the calm water, the green rushes, the green grassintheﬁeldsbehindtherushes.Isawinthegreenﬁeldsinmy mind the white fence topped by the white and lilac ﬂowers of the lilacbushesontheestateofthemanwiththebunchedsilveryhair who had named one of his racehorses after a geographical absurdity or a proper noun in the works of Marcel Proust. I saw, at the placenamedApsleyinmymind,fartothenorth-westofWarrnambool in my mind, enduring lilacs that had previously been invisible.

AtsometimeduringthesevenyearssinceIlastreadthewhole ofÀlarecherchedutempsperdu,IlookedintomyTimesAtlas oftheWorldandlearnedthattheracehorsewhosenameIhadreadintheracebookatWarrnambooltwelvemonthsbeforeIﬁrstread Swann’sWayhadalmostcertainlynotbeennamedafteranygeographicalfeatureinFranceorafteranywordintheworksofMarcelProustbuthadalmostcertainlybeennamedafterabayonthe southcoastofKangarooIsland,offthecoastofSouthAustralia. Since my having learned that the horse that failedtoarrive fromthenorth-westatWarrnamboolracecourseinthelastsummerofmyfather’slifeandthelastsummerbeforeIﬁrstreadthe ﬁctionof MarcelProustwasalmostcertainlynamedafterabay on Kangaroo Island, I havesometimes seen in my mind,soon after I have pronounced in my mind the name of thehorseorsoon after I have seen in my mind a silk jacket withbrownandwhitestripes,wavesoftheSouthernOceanrollingfromfaraway in the direction of South Africa, rolling pastKangarooIslandtowards the south-west coast of Victoria, andbreakingagainstthebaseofSteepleRockinChildersCove,nearMurnane’sBay, andcausingSteepleRockatlasttotopple.Ihavesometimesseen inmymind,soonafterSteeple Rock hastoppledinmymind,a wallofastonehouseandnearthewallasmallboywhowilllater, asayoungman,chooseforhiscolourslilacfromthewhiteand lilaccoloursoftheMonsieurSwanninhismindandbrownfrom thewhiteandbrowncoloursoftheracehorseinhismindfromfar tothenorth-westofWarrnambool:theracehorsewhosenamehe willreadfortheﬁrsttimeinaracebookinthelastsummerbefore hereadsfortheﬁrsttimeabookofﬁctionwiththetitleSwann’s Way.AndIhavesometimesseeninmymind,soonafterIhave seeninmymindthethingsjustmentioned,oneoranotherdetail of a place in my mind where I see together things that I might haveexpectedtolieforeverfarapart;whererowsoflilacsappear on a sheep or cattle property; where my father, who had never heardthenameMarcelProust,isthenarratorofanimmenseand intricatelypatternedworkofﬁction;wherearacehorsehasforits namethewordBayprecededbythewordVivonne.